National affairs editor of The Age

Senator Arthur Sinodinos announced he would stand aside as Assistant Treasurer on Wednesday. Photo: Andrew Meares

Arthur Sinodinos knows a bit about ritual political sacrifice.

He became prime minister John Howard's chief of staff in 1997 after watching Howard's trusted chief staffer and confidant of 20 years, Grahame Morris, put his own career to the sword.

The travel rorts affair had already claimed three ministers and was threatening to close in on Howard himself.

Morris took the rap for failing to pass on to the prime minister a piece of paper showing the travel claims of one of the ministers had been changed in another ministerial office. In doing so, he saved his prime minister, and asked for the sack.

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Thus, when Sinodinos, formerly the economics adviser, slipped into Morris's shoes all those years ago, he was more aware than most of the price of public office.

You hold it only as long as you don't cause problems for your boss, or until your boss needs a fall guy.

The moment Sinodinos' name was uttered in the same sentence as the name Obeid within the cauldron of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, his occupation of a seat on Tony Abbott's frontbench was placed firmly on the endangered list.

He was assistant treasurer. The new government was about to repeal 9000 regulations in the hope of freeing up the economy. And it was preparing its first budget. The Shorten Opposition, having failed to claim the scalp of Assistant Health Minister Fiona Nash, was in frantic search of a new target.

Labor knew exactly what it was to be burnt to a crisp by the Obeid factor, and here were the same flames licking at a Liberal minister.

When counsel for ICAC began frothing about a $20 million payday that awaited Sinodinos if a dodgy deal had gone ahead between Sydney Water and the company of which he had once been chairman, he was more than halfway gone. No matter that the deal hadn't gone ahead, or that he hadn't enjoyed a multimillion-dollar payday.

No matter that he, Sinodinos, wasn't being investigated as an individual by ICAC (and couldn't be, because he had held no public office in NSW) and that he was simply being called as a witness.

He didn't need Abbott to tell him to step aside. He needed only to cast his mind back to the day in 1997 when Morris took the long walk to save his prime minister.

Abbott was effusive in his praise for Sinodinos' own long walk. It was ''the right and decent thing'', done for ''the good of the government'', and he looked forward to Sinodinos returning to the ministry. Sinodinos has likely seen too much now to believe in happy endings.